Validación de tres productos de precipitación en la costa ecuatoriana

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Three precipitation products with global coverage have been analyzed for the ecuadorian coastal zone (below 1000 m above sea level), during the period 1964-1994, to evaluate their behavior and consistency, in addition to their response to the governing seasonal cycle. The precipitation products are : CRU (Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia), GPCC (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre, Deutscher Wetterdients), and UDEL (University of Delaware), regridded at a regular grid of 0.25°. The reference dataset chosen (INMAHI 12k) is based on observations from 51 rain-gauges located at meteorological stations on the Ecuadorian littoral, gridded at 0.25°. The analysis is based, principally, on comparison of the products with the observed annual cycle and total annual precipitation in previously defined homogeneous coastal precipitation zones, using bias, bias/error and correlation analyses. Additionally, a Kruskal-Wallis test was executed over every grid point to assess the statistical differences between these products and reference dataset. Generally, the three products reproduced consistently the coastal annual cycle, however, from the statistical comparison we conclude that GPCC dataset is the one that better adjusts to the observed precipitation regime. In addition, although the three precipitation datasets used in this study are all based on rain-gauge data from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services around the world, the data assimilation and processing systems (including the interpolation procedures) could explain the differences found between the products.